A man in Brazil apparently tortured his family for years. “You’re only going to get out of here dead,” he is said to have told his wife. But things turned out differently.
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In Brazil, a man is said to have held his wife and two sons in his home like prisoners for 17 years. The police arrested the man after an anonymous tip in the poor district of Guaratiba in western Rio de Janeiro and freed the family, the authorities said on Friday. According to the police, the two sons were “tied up, dirty and malnourished”.
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She and her mother were taken to a hospital, dehydrated and starving. According to media reports, the sons are 19 and 22 years old, but look like children or teenagers in pictures published by Brazilian media.
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“You must stay with me to the end”
According to the news portal “G1”, the mother told the authorities that she and her sons sometimes had nothing to eat for three days and were constantly exposed to physical and psychological violence. The man she had been with for 23 years wouldn’t let his wife work and his sons wouldn’t go to school. “You have to stay with me until the end, you’ll only get out of here dead,” he is said to have told his wife.
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“We saw the condition the two children came out in and I don’t think they would have survived another week,” a Guaratiba resident told G1. The mother was so weak that she could not speak.
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Neighbors told media the man was nicknamed “DJ” because he always played loud music – presumably to cover calls for help from his family. Residents also said they had alerted the authorities two years ago, but they only acted now. According to “G1”, the man will have to answer for kidnapping, torture and ill-treatment, among other things.
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